Advanced hack for more RAM (chip upgrade)

Hi Gordon, DrAzzy,

Autodetection in Espruino would be very nice. I think i could solder the CPU to the board by my self. Maybe you can point me to the right place where i can buy a few STM32 Chips with 96KB. But i don´t want to build espruino myself everytime a fine new version comes out.

My current wish is that Gorden has built in support, we have to solder it by our own until Gorden sells them too.

Thanks

Sacha

The part is STM32F103RGT6 or STM32F103RFT6

Digikey sells them individually, and they can be had on ebay too (the G is hard to find on ebay, but the F is not). They seem pretty readily available.

Thanks DrAzzy

Ok, I've just made an issue for this here: https://github.com/espruino/Espruino/issues/340

I don't know when I'll get around to it I'm afraid...

Hello Gordon,

Thanks again.

Sacha

The chips you mentioned have a maximum clock speed of 36Mhz, do you overclock these to 72?

@Alex I'm not sure where you saw that - but I just checked the datasheet for 103F/G and the very first line says:

Features
■ Core: ARM 32-bit Cortex™-M3 CPU with MPU
– 72 MHz maximum frequency

@Gordon, Mouser specs:
http://no.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM32F103RFT6/?qs=2ulep4BJ1ieqSd6x3%252bh%252bmg==

http://no.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM32F103RGT6/?qs=9CYplWqnH7H2%252bxyt3bktHg==

and the espruino one:
http://no.mouser.com/ProductDetail/STMicroelectronics/STM32F103RCT6/?qs=%252bB84zevwoRA6TYzZIgOIoA==

EDIT: sorry, must be wrong on the mouser site, the datasheets on there say its 72Mhz as well. Nevermind my comment.

Or straight from ST: http://www.st.com/web/catalog/mmc/FM141/SC1169/SS1031/LN1565/PF247494

I think Mouser have it wrong - it wouldn't be the first time ;)

Hi Gordon, I was wondering (hoping) if you have any idea as to when we might expect an espruino 2.0 edition. With 2.0 I mean with one of the bigger chips mentioned in this thread.

From your other posts I gather that you're running into boundaries for the firmware as well so I do see this to be the next step. That is ofcourse, assuming we cannot safely assume all current chips have 64kb ram and 512kb flash :).

I'm planning to buy about 30 espruino's around July, so it would be awesome if those could be the new (future proof?) boards. If the CC3000 issues are ironed out probably 60 more around September. Here's to wishful thinking :).

Hi Alex,

I don't have any idea at the moment - it's really not that high on my priority list I'm afraid, and it depends a lot on distributors and the volume of boards that I sell.

There's an optimisation that will make normal arrays of numbers twice as efficient, and there's another that will add another 20% more variables. They're all things that I think should take priority, as they benefit even existing users.

The existing parts will be future proof. The whole point of Espruino is to provide a JavaScript interpreter that runs on cheap microcontrollers - I don't intend to start requiring more complex parts any time soon.

I'm not really running into boundaries with the existing firmware either... I use some compile flags which means it only just fits, but that's intentional. I can get another 50kB if I need just by changing one character in the Makefile, and there's still plenty of room for optimisation in Espruino's innards too.

It's really surprising how few people are actually hitting memory issues right now. You can actually do a hell of a lot with what's available, and I wonder how many projects would fit in 96kB that wouldn't fit in 48.